Once part of a diptych, today this work is kept as a single panel at the Church of Our Lady in Bruges (the other part is at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, KMSKB). Adriaan Isenbrant’s painting shows Mary as Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, in a semicircular niche, with her gaze downcast and hands piously folded. Around her you see scenes that depict her suffering. This is a specific iconography within Marian worship, which goes back to the feast day that is celebrated annually on September 15 within the Catholic Church. On this day, Mary is venerated as a grieving mother along with the seven sorrows that she had to endure. In Isenbrant’s painting they are each portrayed in turn: in the bottom-left we see Simeon’s prophecy in the temple, above it the flight to Egypt and then Mary and Joseph finding the lost twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. At the very top, in the centre, we see the encounter between Mary and Jesus during the Crucifixion. In the top-right, Mary stands under a crucified Jesus, below that the Lamentation is depicted and, finally, the Entombment of Jesus.

MASTERPIECE

While the scenes of the Seven Sorrows of Mary in this painting go back to the traditional iconography and style of the Early Netherlandish painters of the 15^th century, locating these scenes in an architectural setting is innovative in Bruges art. The carved motifs on classical architecture, such as rams heads, garlands and acanthus leaves, are called grotesques, from the Italian word ‘grotto’, or cave. In the 14th century, the Domus Aurea, the lost and decayed palace of the Roman emperor Nero with its magnificent ceiling paintings, was excavated in Rome. Initially, people thought that they had discovered decorated caves, hence the name ‘grotesques’. The motifs on the ceiling paintings were then widely adopted by Italian artists of the Renaissance and later also by the Antwerp Mannerists. Via Antwerp, the trend arrived in Bruges, where the artist Lancelot Blondeel, but also Isenbrant, made grateful use of the lavish motifs. Consequently, there is a fusion of Northern and Southern Europe in this painting.

This artwork is the property of The Church of Our Lady in Bruges and is managed by Musea Brugge.